Thien Cam Beach

The beach's name holds two very different stories.

The first story goes back to the 13th of the Hùng Kings, whom Vietnamese people honor as their ancestors. One night the king passed along this coast and heard a strange sound. The sea wind, the breaking waves, the rustle of pine needles and the echo of the cliffs together made a soft melody, as if a fairy were plucking a lute. The king saw that the mountain was shaped like a tỳ bà lute, and he named it Thiên Cầm Sơn, meaning the mountain of the heavenly lute. From then on the coast carried the same name.

The second story happened in 1407. The Ming army pursued Hồ Quý Ly and his son Hồ Hán Thương. Local tradition says they were caught at the foot of Thiên Cầm Mountain, in the Kỳ La area. Kỳ La is the old name of today's Cẩm Xuyên. After that, people began to read the name another way, written with two different Chinese characters, and it came to mean "heaven's capture."

So the same two words carry one story about the sound of a heavenly lute and another about a fallen dynasty.

Both explanations of the name are popular legends. But the capture of Hồ Quý Ly in 1407 is real, and the old histories record it.

Thiên Cầm Beach lies in the commune of the same name, about 20 kilometers southeast of Hà Tĩnh city. The sand stretches for almost three kilometers in a great arc, held between two mountains. Thiên Cầm Mountain stands at the northern end and Đầu Voi Mountain at the southern end. Because the bay is sheltered from the wind, the water here is clear and green and fairly calm.

Thiên Cầm Mountain is 108 meters high. From a distance it looks like a tỳ bà lute. The foot of the mountain pushes out to the sea in two blocks, which the people there call Cùm Nậy and Cùm Con. On the summit stand a temple and the Cầm Sơn Pagoda, a spiritual place tied to the history of the name.

Out to sea lie two small islands, Hòn Én and Hòn Bớc, about two kilometers from the shore. They still look wild, with white sand and coral reefs, like two green dots floating on the water.

Around five in the morning, the boats come back to the pier after a night at sea. The catch is spread out for the morning fish market. The squid just landed is fresh, the crabs are still crawling and the silver fish are still shining. People buy seafood right at the pier and carry it to a nearby stall to be grilled. Those who have been to Thiên Cầm remember it for a long time.

Few people know Yên Lạc Pagoda, but it has stood for several hundred years. The Ministry of Culture ranked it a national monument on December 12, 1994. Its rarest treasure is a set of old Buddha statues carved from jackfruit wood. They are judged to be the most original in Hà Tĩnh today. Among them are the Cửu Long statue and a set of paintings called Thập Điện Diêm Vương.

The special product of the Thiên Cầm area is nước mắm Nhượng, a fish sauce. It is made from sea fish in the traditional way of the old Cẩm Nhượng commune, which is now part of Thiên Cầm commune.

The beach itself has a gentle slope and shallow water, kind to adults and children alike.

Thiên Cầm is not a closed-off resort. Its beauty is an open beach, a fishing village, fresh seafood and a local way of life that is still very real.

When evening falls, the sea wind joins the rustle of pine needles on Thiên Cầm Mountain, above the curved sand. This is the heavenly lute that people of old heard, still ringing over the sea of their homeland.